New Orleans police sort out details of bloody chaos in eastern New Orleans

Five people were shot, three fatally, inside an eastern New Orleans home Thursday morning, launching a chain of events that ended in a police gunfight with the suspects in the Gentilly Woods area. Officers shot three of the suspects, killing one man.

By nightfall, authorities were still sorting out details of the chaos, which unfurled over a 15-minute span. The identities of the three victims and the wounded suspects had not been released as of Thursday night.

The incident also prompted the evacuation of police headquarters Thursday evening after investigators looking through the suspects' car for evidence discovered two live grenades.

The bloodshed followed a series of shootings that spared no corner of New Orleans. In an 18-hour period, stretching back to Wednesday afternoon, 17 people were wounded by gunfire. In two separate incidents, gunmen fired on police in broad daylight.

The latest slaying, the quintuple shooting in eastern New Orleans, occurred shortly after 9 a.m. A gunman, or gunmen, entered a brick, ranch-style house bedecked in Carnival decorations in the 7400 block of Devine Avenue.

Gunshots rang out, wounding five people. A male and female died at the scene. Paramedics took three others to the hospital. One of them, a male, died there. Police have not released their ages.

Within minutes of the shooting, officers broadcast a description of the gunman and the car, a red Pontiac, that fled the shooting scene. An officer spotted the car and its three occupants, waited for backup and then the chase began, police said.

The pursuit ended quickly, with the Pontiac crashing into a pole outside a Goodyear tire store at Chef Menteur Highway and Press Drive. The driver hopped out and began to shoot at police, said NOPD Deputy Superintendent Kirk Bouyelas.

Officers returned fire, fatally wounding the gunman, and wounding his two associates. The gunman fell to the ground, where he lay prone, his hands near his head. A handgun lay a few paces away.

A man and woman, passengers in the car, were taken to LSU Trauma Center for their gunshot wounds. An officer, meanwhile, was treated for a graze wound to his leg, police said.

Bouyelas, speaking to media at the scene shortly after the incident, said he could not immediately say how many times the gunman fired at police, nor how many times officers fired at him. Evidence of heavy gunfire marked the scene, with roughly three dozen evidence cones -- typically used to note bullet casings -- scattered near the Pontiac.

"It's unfortunate that this individual was ultimately shot and killed, but the officers believed their lives were in danger and responded accordingly," Bouyelas said.

The two wounded suspects will be arrested in the shootings on Devine Avenue, as well as the attempted murder of a police officer, upon their release from the hospital, Bouyelas said.

As investigators canvassed the police shooting scene, grief-stricken relatives gathered outside the modest home on Devine Avenue, about five miles from where police confronted the suspects.

Police scuttled in and out of the home's two doors. Eventually, the coroner's office removed bodies from each door. Women cried and gasped. A crowd slowly grew through the late morning.

Police said the quintuple shooting did not appear to be a home invasion, though officials did not release details on a possible motive or relationship between the victims and the suspects.

The three killings inside the house brought the city's murder total to 11 for the first 12 days of the year. The spike in gunfire follows a busy few weeks for the tourist-centric city, with hundreds of thousands of visitors clogging downtown. But most of the crime persisted in residential neighborhoods.

Over the next few hours, into Wednesday night, investigators raced to different shootings across the city. A man was shot twice at about 5:15 p.m. at the busy intersection of Claiborne and South Carrollton avenues.

About 45 minutes later, four people were shot in the 2100 block of Elysian Fields Avenue in the 7th Ward neighborhood. A 12-year-old girl and two young women, ages 18 and 24, were sitting on a porch when gunmen fired on them. A 20-year-old man walking nearby was also wounded.

Within an hour, police responded to an additional shooting in the 1300 block of Columbus Street. There, they found a 19-year-old man with gunshot wounds.

And at 8:35 p.m., another shooting took place in the 4800 block of Wilson Avenue in eastern New Orleans. Two men, 19 and 24, were sitting in a vehicle when a white pickup truck approached and gunmen began shooting.

The Jackson, S.C., native has been in the city for about a year and said the broad daylight attack on police rattled him, especially because it happened so close to campus. He worries about his fiancee even leaving their home.

"I'm scared for her to go outside," McIver said. "This is midmorning," he added.

Still, the seminarian said he was grateful none of the bullets injured innocent bystanders.

"Bullets have no name," he said.

The latest spate of violence took on an additionally urgent tone Thursday night, when NOPD headquarters had to be evacuated because of an explosive threat.

Two grenades discovered Thursday evening when the red Pontiac involved in the eastern New Orleans shootout was being processed in a "crime cage" at police headquarters. The discovery prompted an hourlong evacuation of New Orleans police headquarters. Workers in the police building at 715 S. Broad St. were asked to remain outside the building after crime-lab workers and homicide detectives found two objects in a safe in the car's back seat, police said.

Police wanted to make sure the objects were not a threat to the workers inside headquarters and called the bomb squad, which removed the explosives.

The building evacuation began about 6:30 p.m. and everyone was back inside about 7:40 p.m., officer Frank Robertson III said.

Bouyelas said police, so far, do not know whether anyone planned to use the explosive devices or how they would be used.